Little Italy

Once a sprawling neighborhood with a burgeoning Italian community, Little Italy in Manhattan is now little more than a few blocks of Italian restaurants, gelaterias, and cafes centered on Mulberry Street. The area was home to some 10,000 Italian residents in the early 1900s, but after World War II, many moved to other neighborhoods or boroughs, diminishing the Italian character of the... [more]

Once a sprawling neighborhood with a burgeoning Italian community, Little Italy in Manhattan is now little more than a few blocks of Italian restaurants, gelaterias, and cafes centered on Mulberry Street. The area was home to some 10,000 Italian residents in the early 1900s, but after World War II, many moved to other neighborhoods or boroughs, diminishing the Italian character of the neighborhood. For businesses that survived the exodus, rapidly rising rents in the post-2001 downtown resurgence presented another existential threat. Now, the former northern end of the neighborhood has become NoLIta, (for North of Little Italy), and SoHo and Chinatown are pressing in from either side. Tourists still flock to charming Mulberry Street, where the pizza and meatballs are excellent, and doubtless some locals still procure authentic pastas and sausages from the local storefronts. With its historic buildings and sky-high rents, however, Little Italy is rapidly becoming one more swath of chic downtown Manhattan — though a gorgeous one at that. [less]